Senior Joey Wise led the varsity baseball team on Monday, as he drove in four runs in both games against Forest Hills Northern. It wasn’t enough; however, with errors on the basepaths and in the field costing the team both games yesterday in 5-4 and 9-4 losses to the Huskies.

With a huge win over Byron Center the previous Friday, the Rangers were looking to continue their winning ways in a late-season playoff push.

In the first game of the day, senior Brady Price would take the mound again as he pitched a pretty good game. He went four and one-third innings, only giving up five hits and five runs with just one being earned. At the start of the game, both teams couldn’t get it going. Quickly, the Rangers capitalized. Joey drove in junior Matthew Mittlestadt in the top of the third to get the first run on the board for either team. Joey would score on a wild pitch, giving FHC a 2-0 lead. Northern quickly answered with two runs of its own in the third, tying the game at two going into the fourth inning.

Neither team scored in the fourth inning, but the Rangers were the next ones to score off of senior Nathan Sigg’s double into center field that scored one run to make the lead 3-2 for FHC. Northern, yet again, answered in the bottom of the fifth with three runs off of a passed ball and a sacrifice fly to give the Huskies a 5-3 lead. The Rangers answered with one run on a sacrifice grounder by Joey to cut the deficit to one. Neither team would score after that play, as Forest Hills Northern took game one 5-4.

Game two was a much different story than the first, with the game starting with strong pitching. Senior Sean MacLeod pitched 3 and one-third innings but gave up five runs in those innings. Northern started the game off well with a run scored in each of the first three innings of the game, while the Rangers only scored one off of a Joey single. In the bottom of the fourth, the Huskies blew the game wide open with a four-spot in the bottom of the fourth inning, giving Northern a 7-1 lead. The Rangers answered with a sacrifice fly by Brady and a single by Joey that drove in two runs to cut the lead to 7-3. The only other score would be from a wild pitch that senior Dawsen Beach scored on. The Huskies added two runs in the bottom of the sixth and sealed the win in the seventh to sweep the Rangers by a final score of 9-4.

With a record now of 12-16, the Rangers will look to get revenge on FHN as they will play the Huskies again on Wednesday, May 25 at 4:15 PM. Later on in the week, the team will play at the EGR Gerken tournament on Friday and Saturday.